Tag: surprise

Nursery rhymes

I probably could use a good one right now…

There was an old woman who swallowed a fly, but I don’t know why she swallowed the fly…

But I do… she probably had something die in the walls of her house, and the blood flies appeared one morning outing seemingly nowhere, and she was bombarded by them only hours later as she hung up the fly paper strands from the ceiling, because they had quadrupled since that morning, and so she was crying and crying and packing a bag quickly so she could leave and stay elsewhere while the fly papers did their work (she hoped, anyway), and, as she wondered how the hidden dead creature would be found at the end of the week (that was just beginning) when the exterminator came for their long visit, when it was only Sunday currently, and she slipped on her hurried and panicked way down the stairs, carrying her hurriedly-packed bag and other necessary items for the week, and, as she called out in her slip, a fly ran into her open, inhaling mouth…

Or something like that…

I mean, it’s just an idea… no reason for that particular scenario to have come to mind… no reason at all… except for what happened today, of course…. so glad the last bit actually didn’t happen…, but I could totally see it as having been a horrible top-off for the whole miserable part of the day…., but I’m glad it didn’t.

Post-a-day 2019

Wowzer

I started today with lots and lots and lots of tears… and a decent amount of snot, too….

And then, as though I had just ended a long-term dating relationship, I finished crying, cleaned myself up, and spent the day with my mom, my eyelids weary and, ever so slightly, burning…. every mirror glance made it look as though I had just been crying, though I hadn’t cried since hours earlier…

I felt a heavy weight had lifted away from me, one I had very much grown accustomed to being ‘normal’… and the ghost of a weight still lingers, as though my emotional and psychological muscles are gushing back to normal size, the blood finally flowing through much more freely again, oxygen reaching the muscles fully, at last… and a certain sense of nervousness at what is to come from this openness, this space that had been so large and so occupied (and heavy) for so long…

And I can feel how much my everybody wants this rest that tonight has to offer me in this big and cozy bed at my mom’s house… I cannot quite imagine what tomorrow will bring, but I can sense that there will be a sort of ‘other side’ I will reach, come morning…

Although, this dog that just began barking next door… could be a problem here… when the neighbors first got him, months ago, he barked all night long for days… and I slept almost not at all, until the dog went hoarse from the barking, and I couldn’t hear it anymore……… oh, goodie(!) – he’s stopped.

Anyway, I await happily the person I will be not only free but able to be tomorrow.

Thank you, God, for today.

It was terrifying.

And I think I’ve been working toward it for quite some time now…

So, it is nice to have it somewhat handled, at last.

Thank you. 🙂

Post-a-day 2019

A lifestyle, I suppose

Last week, I was talking about how I am suddenly covered in scrapes and bruises…, and that I attribute their origination, though each specific one unknown, generally to CrossFit.

Tonight, my friend, which started with me a few weeks ago, messaged me and the showed me how she is much in the same boat:

I’m literally scuffed and bruised all over.. this is my life now

The coach, after class tonight, said to me, without his knowing about my friend’s message to me, that pain and struggle and small injury are all regular parts of doing these workouts – it’s a lifestyle, he said.

And so, I guess it is…

Tonight was hard… really hard…, and not entirely for physical effort.

The certain muscles that were being used intensely for one part of the workout really, really wiped me out mentally and emotionally – I was balling my eyes out ugly every time I found myself in the midst of that piece of the workout.

The pain and gain and bruises may be part of the lifestyle, but I am very much looking forward to having let go all that is left of this stuff that drags me down emotionally… I want to be wonderfully fit physically, and, in my case, that includes and requires I be wonderfully fit psychologically and emotionally, too.

All of these are parts of this lifestyle I am willing and wanting to follow… bruises and scrapes included (though I imagine they will come in lesser frequency the better I become at all of this stuff!). 😛

Post-a-day 2019

Photo boss

Okay, maybe “photo boss” is a bit much, but it sure sounds intense, and in the right kind of way… ;P

Anyway, so I did the senior portraits for someone the other week – remember that?

(Maybe not, but let’s continue as though you do.)

Using the money from that, I invested in a new lens I’d wanted for a while (which has a high likelihood of earning me menu for a certain kind of photography rather soon, consistently), and in a second memory card that will be extremely useful as I do more and more photo sessions, and in an external hard drive exclusively for photos (since they take up loads of space, now that I’m doing the RAW files and all).

And – possibly the best part – I still have a bit of the money to spare, even after buying myself a huge tank of gas for the truck (the vehicle a family friend has lent me, so that I can go longer distances reliably, instead of only short distances, and unreliable so).

Isn’t that great?

Oh(!).

Of course, the photos turned out totally awesome – I’m super proud!

So, yeah… I’m really happy about these steps I’m taking.

It really makes a difference to declare that I am doing this. 🙂

Post-a-day 2019

Officially Professional

It might not look like much, but it’s kind of a big deal… representatively, anyway.

This, my friends (and people I definitely do not know), is my first official photographer pass and credential as a professional photographer.

Sure, it was for a friend’s band’s performance…, and it isn’t exactly the kind of photography I am aiming to do most of the time…, but it was also for real – I, Hannah, was listed as “Photographer” on the special guest list.

I declared myself a photographer and that I am doing photography (not just ‘trying to get it going’ or ‘trying it out’) this past Wednesday night, and, here I am, Friday night, with an official photographer pass.(!)

How cool is that?(!!!)

Again, it isn’t the style of photography I’m aiming to do with most of my photoing, but it is still totally fun and totally cool!

Special bonus that they are totally okay if none of the photos turned out… I had never photographed a band in a club with uber-nuts lights flashing everywhere except on the band members’ fronts, so it was a good low-risk opportunity to practice and to learn.

(Aah!)

Yay!

Post-a-day 2019

Some sort of workout

We did some CrossFit tonight – or, as I sometimes like to call it, XFactor.

I also started menstruation today.

Not that I initiated it or anything, of course… it just began.

Usually, if I have any pain, it is right at the beginning of menstruation, Day one or Day two.

And, naturally, Day one this time around opted to give me a bit of pain.

Not much, but some pain, nonetheless.

Add to this my significantly lowered energy level – yes, this is totally normal for menstruation, in case anyone was unsure – and the high humidity and heat of this afternoon, and you can imagine a tough workout ahead of me when I arrived for the class.

So, the sprints for the first fifteen-ish minutes were tough, but I made it.

And the weight stuff was okay – I was just generally weaker and shorter-winded than usual.

But the plank stuff at the end – by the way, plank is usually no big deal for me at all – was one of the oddest experiences I’ve ever had with all of this.

You see, plank was fine… it was when we continued from regular into what light have been called a marching plank, where you put one arm stretched in the air in front of you at a time, while keeping your back flat, legs wide, and butt still low, that I hit a tiny bit of trauma…

For that part, followed by mountain climbers (still with the butt low), a lot of the lower abdomen ends up being used.

… a part which had not clicked for me ahead of time…

And so, as I struggled through my second round of the plank combo, and was on the marching plank things, I actually had to stop – something I’ve never done in plank work – for the extreme and intense pain that felt like my ovaries and uterus were about to explode forward out of my lower abdomen… I skipped over the rest of the marching things and just finished the mountain climbers before stopping, but it was still enough to leave me almost rather paralyzed when I sat back, crying.

I’ve never cried in the middle of a workout before, but I did it about three times today.

Yes, the one cry could have been enough, but I had to make sure I wasn’t just being lazy, wanting to get out of the hard work simply because it was hard, and using the excuse of my menstruation to get out of it… and it turned out that it was a combination.

So, I did a few of the marching things and all of the mountain climber things each round afterward, thereby still putting in the work, but not putting myself in unnecessary and useless pain.

I know I have lower energy at these times, and so I have aimed recently to allow for that (and rather successfully for the most part).

Tonight was just the first time I had to factor that into my goals of becoming more fit – I always push hard when my fitness is on the line these days, and it was surprisingly hard to scale back tonight, despite the fact that it was necessary and good for me to scale back.

Anyway, speaking of all of this, nature calls, so I’m off.

Sweet dreams, World at large.

Post-a-day 2019

Speedboats and slow thoughts

I might have shared about this already, but I’ll share it again, because it’s on my mind…

I was thinking tonight about this boat thing.

(Well, actually, I was thinking about Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and how I’m looking at reading it with a friend, so we can talk about it, but that this time I might do well to make a list of reasons why it’s good that I didn’t live in Pride and Prejudice times.

You see, I usually get lost happily in the story, such that I am sad when I finish it and just return to real life… it only ever takes me a couple or few days to read, because I end up doing little else once I start reading it.

And so, at the end of it all, I am covered with a sort of depressive feeling of my life being inadequate and/or uninteresting and I likely to be anything wonderful compared to the world of which I’d just been dreaming in Jane Austen’s book.

Anyway, so I was thinking about making a list of reasons, right?

I’d thought, ‘Oh, the whole bathing part makes me glad I don’t live there… that’s for sure,’ because I like being clean, and clean didn’t seem to be so precise a thing in those days, and smelly was all too common…

‘But then,’ I thought, ‘I couldn’t have ridden on speed boats or gone water skiing…, though I could have ridden on big boats between countries… like the Titanic!… only not the Titanic, because that was terrible, and, besides, it was much later in time, anyway…’

And that was then I thought of tonight’s topic renewal!)

Sophie Kinsella has a book where the main character has amnesia… when she watches her wedding and honeymoon DVD to help jog her memory, she sees herself beside her husband, who happens to be driving a speedboat.

She is absolutely delighted by the fact that her husband can drive a speedboat(!), and brings it up in her mind somewhat regularly, partly as a reminder that it it worth staying with him, despite the fact that she doesn’t remember him or seem to have a connection with him, and partly just as an adorable and silly reminder of how amazing her life has become (since she can last remember it), because, goodness, a man must be amazing if he can drive a speedboat(!), and it is even more amazing to be married to such a man.

Totally silly, I know, but that in no way changes the fact that I love it every time I think of it.

The main character does such a good job of convincing the reader of her belief in the fact that her husband’s skill is spectacular, that I found myself even thinking how amazing it would be, even dating someone who knows how to drive a speedboat.

‘Wow!’ I would think, ‘What could that be like, knowing, let alone dating or marrying, such a person?’

And this thinking continued for rather some time – even a couple or few years, I dare say – before something absolutely absurd hit me.

Growing up, two of my grandparents lived in a private community of lakes a ways North of Houston.

It would take us about two hours, door to door.

My uncle kept a ski boat there.

And we grew up kneeboarding and water skiing.

The damn broke terribly when I was supposed to start to learn to ski, but I eventually had the opportunity, when the damn and lake were restored.

And so, for the last couple years my grandparents lived there, I was the only child living at home, and so the only one who went to visit with my dad whenever he went up (the other went, too, but nowhere near as often).

My dad, therefore, taught me just about everything needed in terms of caring for and using the boat.

The ski boat… a speedboat…

Meaning, of course, that I not only know my dad as someone who can drive a speedboat, but that…, well,… I know… myself… you see…

Yeah… not too sure how I missed that one… for years.

😂😂😂

Not so impossible after all, to find someone who can drive a speedboat. 😛

Post-a-day 2019

Aaaaahhhh, those blasted housemates!

Well, they’ve done it alright… the raccoons have overstayed their welcome.

It is official now that my poor bathroom, the place I must go in my home and cannot avoid, has fleas(!!!).

The raccoons have been living in the wall there the past couple weeks or so, and they seem to have brought fleas with them… the vent in the ceiling seems to be the culprit for how they’re getting into the actual bathroom from the walls.

Naturally, I despise it – nearly a year ago, I had a dreadful encounter with fleas while housesitting in this very street… any attempt at a repeat is to be obliterated, thank you very much.

And so, I suffer ever so slightly more tonight, acutely aware of the surprisingly marge number of freckles I have on my lower legs, ankles, and feet – indeed, I had no idea how many freckles I actually have down there (on my legs, of course, I mean).

I have covered my ankles and shins/calves with some essential oils I read about quickly online just now, ones that seem to be flea repellant and flea life-enders, and I have placed two bowls in the bathroom with soapy water and lit tea light candles… we shall see what the morning brings, but I have already dropped two or three in the bowls since I set them down just a short bit ago…

And yes, I am aware that that is not quite how the bowls and candles work, but, when they attack my ankles just because I’ve entered the room, I’m not apt to let them hang around on me…, and so I pinch and drop them directly into the soapy water of their future.

Ugh… you darned raccoons – I allow you a place to stay while you raise your babies, and you bring in this rubbish… how unkind of a houseguest this is.

Now, here I am in my room, panicking at every hair twinge and bit of air that brushes any part of my legs, worried at what it might be… I struggled falling back asleep this morning after I got the (I think) flea bite (hopefully) in the bathroom… I now worry at my being able to fall asleep at all tonight, or at least to sleep well and awake rested in the morning.

It seems sadly unlikely… :/

Darn raccoons… and, of course, fleas(!).

Post-a-day 2019

Tantalizing Fantasizing

At this one school where I worked, it wasn’t that I felt unappreciated, because I didn’t…, but more that I felt unnoticed…, which, in a way, feels kind of way worse.

I remember finding myself fantasizing about receiving this particular award at the end of the school year – it was an award given to a teacher whom the senior class had elected as invaluable for their own educations… aka an extra-special teacher.

Since the students elected it, I had a chance of actually winning the award, though I had so few of the seniors, it wouldn’t happen, anyway.

Nonetheless, as I sat amongst the miniature version of the band during the senior awards ceremony, at which this teacher award also was awarded, I would ‘read aloud’ in my head the write-up they would give about me, before officially revealing my name… mentioning how I was involved in many areas of the school: dance PE class, teaching foreign language, helping with theatre on many levels, assistant coaching and co-founding the women’s lacrosse program, helping and participating in band events, actually playing trumpet in the band (including at this ceremony), founding of an acts of kindness group on campus, and much more in the unique realm of student interaction… and the kids would choose me for the award, because they acknowledged my utter awesome-ness and outstanding-ness as not only a person but a person who encourages and empowers them to be the best people they can be… I think no student who has known me would deny that fact.

My students know that I love them and that I want all the best for them, including if that means they need to suffer a bit to get themselves straightened out… they know and understand this all just from being with me in class or the various activities.

I take no nonsense, which they know, too, but my love and concern for them are unwavering and undeniable, and they know it.

I miss that.

And that is why I allowed myself to fantasize about receiving the award – if enough kids had known me, I could have won the award… if the administration ever would have allowed my winning it, of course. 😛

Anyway… yeah.

P.S. Tomorrow holds something new for me, in a sense…, if you feel up to it, I would appreciate your sending good intentions and/or prayers my way. 😉

Post-a-day 2019

Can’t touch this

My aunt somewhat recently commented that so long as no one touches me, I’m good to go… ready for the world and taking it on, full power.

When I was younger, there seemed to be something for me about people being categorized in my head as either “clean” or “dirty”.

It didn’t mean they actually were clean or dirty, but my brain’s inner workings qualified them with these terms, and permitted the clean people to make contact with me without my being concerned…. and, if a “dirty” person touched me, I could survive, but would be bothered, though that person could not, under any circumstances, touch my hair – I would freak (even to the point of tears in my eyes, ready to cry from the upset and the sudden desire to get away and shower as soon as possible).

Nowadays, I don’t so much notice this specific categorization happening… it seems to be more of a “close people”, “people”, and “people who are not supposed to touch me”, with the “people” category being the standard person I know and around whom I am comfortable, meaning that this person is probably fine to touch me as needed – tap my shoulder or arm, fingers touch when handing me something, possibly even hug, etc.

The “close people” are the people with whom I feel emotionally/psychologically close, and with whom I also like being physically close and in contact – like a dog always wanting to be touching at least some part of its loving owner… sometimes we wrestle to sit on top of one another, sometimes we hold hands or pinkies, and sometimes we just lean on one another while hanging or and sitting around (or not touch at all at times) – the physical contact is mutually comfortable and hardly considered, because it just happens almost automatically when we are together; it is part of how we express our love.

The third category is less acknowledge in my head, unless a person from it actually acts to touch me or touches me – then I am suddenly acutely aware of their being in that category.

Typically, though, I hardly notice the categories consciously, and just act accordingly with people from each category, pretty much behaving toward them as I’d like them to behave toward me (excluding, of course, people who, I notice, don’t want to be touched, in which case, I don’t touch them, even if I would have been comfortable with their touching me).

And, when I say ‘touching’, I mean, of course, touching my skin or hair, but also touching my clothes, anything on my person, and, depending on the situation, anything that belongs to me – it isn’t merely about skin-to-skin contact.

These categorizations today seem to be less connected to physical traits – extreme acne or oily faces, something usually stuck in one’s teeth, etc. – and more wholistic, looking at how I feel emotionally and psychologically with the individuals… if I am emotionally at ease, I also am physically, which includes touching me… if I am not entirely at ease with the person, I am not ready for that person to touch me.

Sometimes, I can handle touching someone who has yet to reach the “people” category, but it has to be that I‘ve initiated the contact – if it is spontaneous and started by the other person, we’ve got some very disturbed moments to follow for me.

So, then, how do I express to someone who has not yet reached the “people” stage that I don’t want to be touched?

For me, my lack of physical contact toward others has always seemed an appropriate way to express this – neither rude nor mean, but showing that I am not interested in physical contact of any kind.

However, this doesn’t always work.

I acknowledge that I’m the one who has this seemingly uncommon trait of wanting specifically to be not touched, and I don’t want the other person to feel rejected or hated or anything of the sort – it is merely that we are not on an emotional/psychological level of comfort that works for me to have physical contact with one another.

Perhaps it is best just to explain it this way… perhaps the person won’t like being around me so much… perhaps that’s best, because this is part of my package in life, and perhaps I will be surrounded by the people who are instant “people”, when I am honest about my physical comfort around people… perhaps not…

Perhaps… perhaps… perhaps…

I’m not sure if I ever will have a clear answer for this inquiry, but it is definitely on my mind – how does one approach a socially uncommon uncomfortable situation within traditional social settings…? 😛

That is the question.

Post-a-day 2019